What a long strange trip it's been.

Gouache? Really?

Well, gotta admit, gouache is a good word. And the constant second-guessing about the o and the u is pretty entertaining. But really? I just haven’t used it in a very long time.

Oops! I haven’t written in a while, hu? Well, I’m back. At least for now. In the interim there were bike rides and gardens and many thousands more bees and workshops and writing and lots of studio time. All caught up? Good.

.The past week I’ve been trying to understand gouache, a medium I didn’t take seriously way back so why now? I heard a great talk the other day by the Kidlit author Laura McGee Kvasnosky about her work. Many things stayed with me but the one idea that is still bugging me? How she does her illustrations: Gouache. Then a layer of ink. Then wash that off, and voila brilliant illustration.

Well, it hasn’t quite worked out that way for me, but in the process I’m becoming so intrigued with the potential for this approach. The surface def matters, so I’m trying different things from toothy WC paper to flat plane clay surface (like!). Coming from watercolor and ink and collage and mixed media, this is very designy and graphicky but I like it somehow. Okay, here are my two attempts today, more soon.

On April 1st, 2016, I was riding my bike around West Seattle, enjoying a surprisingly hot spring day. Admittedly, I didn’t feel great, but I was determined to enjoy the sun.

By 8 o’clock that night, after an MRI revealed a large mass in my cerebellum that had ruptured, I was admitted to Swedish Neuroscience Center for an emergency craniotomy. I survived handily and emerged 5 days later with a new titanium plate in my head and a huge bag of pills, feeling better than I had in a long time…and for that I was deeply grateful.

What I didn’t know yet was the enormous impact the ruptured tumor mass and craniotomy would have on my brain. On me. On my life. For nearly two years.

I am an artist and writer. Even as everything fell apart, I kept notes and made art. I’ve spent the last several months going back, piecing this whole thing together.